ASOS; A shopping world of abundance!

No longer do we live in a world of scarcity. We live in a world of abundance.

This weeks reading by Anderson made me realize how the internet has opened a huge window of options for consumers. Growing up in a small town with limited clothing stores and one tiny music store I have experienced the concept of scarcity first hand. But today with constant access to the World Wide Web I am provided with an abundance of options and am no longer forced to shape my style and tastes around what limited items are included within these stores.

Anderson describes how the internet has created an entirely new economic model based on three main rules; make everything available, provide items at a lower cost and help consumers find what they are after. For the purpose of this blog I am going to discuss how the clothing site ASOS has followed these rules to achieve worldwide economic success.

Rule number one; Make everything available.

The internet has abolished many of the challenges faced by offline stores including the limitations of storage space and restriction of 9-5 opening hours. Due to the removal of physical space and transition into the virtual ASOS can afford to offer a catalog of over 50,000 ‘hit AND miss’ items to its customers.

The ASOS warehouse; an unbelievable 161, 544 square meters of storage space.

Rule Number Two; Cut the price in half. Now lower it. The costs associated with the sale of products online are much lower than what are incurred offline.  Therefore ASOS has the advantage of not only offering an enormous range of items 24/7 but also are able to offer these at a lower cost.

Rule Number Three; Help me find it.

This is the tricky part, as without the reassurance of a retail assistant convincing you that the horrible purple mini skirt would match perfectly with a pink spotted t-shirt it is often hard to make a purchase decision. ASOS and many other clothing stores have recognized that during the decision making process you need to adopt both the short and long tail approach and by relying on consumer behavior data they are able to suggest additional products which enables them to gently encourage consumers to explore the unknown outside of tiny offline retail outlets.

Facebook is the new WWW.

Who needs an email account when you have Facebook messages? Who needs MSN when you have Facebook chat? Who needs Flicker when you have Facebook photos? Who needs Foursquare when you can have Facebook places? Who needs to watch the ABC when you can be informed of the world’s news through Facebook status updates? Who needs YouTube when your friends are going to show you the best videos via Facebook? Who needs the World Wide Web when you already have FACEBOOK?!

Facebook is no longer just a social networking site. It has evolved into a convergence destination that is slowly replacing email, instant messaging, video-sharing, gaming and other activities that were previously scattered across the World Wide Web.  Jenkins (2004) states that ‘convergence is more than simply a technological shift it alters the relationship between existing technologies, industries, markets, genres and audience’ and Facebook has done just that. 

Facebook has revolutionized the way we interact with and consume media. I myself have become heavily dependent on Facebook not only for socializing, sharing and stalking but also often use the platform as a news source. Today I feel as though I am more informed of breaking news via Facebook than watching the ‘actual’ news. This is due to the instantaneous nature of Facebook with a status update often able to inform quicker than a news outlet can. For example a quick check of Facebook via my iPhone on May 2^nd this year informed me that Osama Bin Laden had apparently been killed.  There are numerous other examples to add to this list but the point I am trying to make is that convergence within Facebook has reduced the amount of time users spend ‘surfing’ web as many have become trapped within the Facebook vortex and are thus not required to utilize many of the other platforms of the world wide web.

Jenkins, H (2004) The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence, International Journal of Cultural Studies, 7/1, 33-43.

Girl Talk-Remix or Piracy?

The presumed belief that ones intellectual property is protected by law is a nice idea, but in today’s digital age of reproducing, recreating and downloading content at the click of a button it seems that it is almost impossible for copyright laws to keep up.  In this blog I will discuss the difficult task faced by intellectual property laws in the digital era and will use ‘Girl Talk’ as my example to support this.

Gregg Gills or ‘Girl Talk’ as he is commonly known in the music world has become famous for his sampling of popular music tracks into aural collages. The success of ‘Girl Talk’ has sparked debate within the public sphere as many believe that his work is a major breach of copyright legislation and thus he shouldn’t be able to profit off the work of others. Today ‘Girl Talk’ has released 5 albums of cut-and-paste pop and has become a huge name in the music industry; all without one legal suit against his name.

Below is an example of Girl Talks latest work; remix or piracy? what are your thoughts?

Gill’s has so far avoided legal action as he claims to conform to the requirements of ‘”fair use” under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976. The concept of “Fair use” legally allows unauthorized reproduction of creative pieces if the work is educational, satirical, a parody or transforms the original without infringing on the works monetary commercial value. I believe that ‘Girl Talk’ exploits this oversimplification of the law to his benefit and by transforming old samples into creative mash ups he provides the audience with something completely new.

The success of Girl Talk highlights a grey area of Intellectual property law. I believe that by strengthening current laws we would be inhibiting the ability of creative artists such as Girl Talk to flourish yet at the same time we may be encouraging other artists to cross moral lines without any repercussions at all. In the future intellectual property faces a difficult task; how do YOU think the law should respond?

The documentary 'Remix Manifesto' elaborates further on this issue. A trailer of the film can be found below and I reccomend that you check it out as it raises some interesting points on modern societies consumption of media.